A Sweet Surprise
by ohmytheon
Summary: All Uraraka wants to do is bake something that Bakugou will like for his birthday. Why do people keep reading into that?


**Notes:** There is so much fluff in this that you might actually get a cavity. This is for **thesvenmachine** on the Kacchako Discord. Happy birthday! Thanks for being an inspiration!

 **Disclaimer:** I own nothing. I'm just here peddling out fanfics.

* * *

The moment Uraraka had realized that it was Bakugou's birthday, she had been determined to do something special for him. She didn't know what, but she was going to do something. They were in that weird limbo between their second and third year, which was why she hadn't done anything for his birthday last year and she hadn't yet known him the weeks before they started at UA. She liked to do special things for her friends on their special days and she liked to think that she and Bakugou were friends.

As long as you could classify two people that sparred together, bickered a lot (it wasn't bickering when she was right and he was being stubborn), meal prepped, made a lot of dirty jokes and had late night conversations after everyone had gone to bed, did some light tutoring (was it really tutoring when he was always right and she was stubborn?), and occasionally had this weird random tension between them that made it difficult to focus as, well, friends. If that fell under the friend category, then that was what they were.

(She was just going to ignore that weird tension until she died.)

When Deku had absentmindedly brought up the fact that it was Bakugou's birthday with the wonder if he was doing anything for it, Uraraka's mind had gone into overdrive. Why hadn't she known what day his birthday was? She should've gotten him something, although her limited funds didn't give her many options. Besides, she wasn't sure what she could give him, aside from maybe a knuckle sandwich.

Ha! She bet he'd think that was amusing after he turned it around on her. Ass.

After an hour of brainstorming, Uraraka came up with the bright idea of baking him something. They had all the ingredients in the dorm kitchen, so surely she could come up with a treat that he would like. Most people went home during their breaks, but Uraraka's parents lived far away and it simply made sense to stay at school. Bakugou, she knew, lived nearby. She'd actually been to his house once by accident with Kirishima and Mina a few months before. If anything, she could just set the baked good on his window and then leave to walk around the city.

Of course, Uraraka's full proof plan was riddled with holes. Like the fact that she didn't know how to bake. She'd started to cook more in the past year thanks to Bakugou, but she still wasn't on his level. Plus, baking required a technical skill that she'd never possessed. It couldn't be that difficult though. All she had to do was look up a recipe and follow it. She was good at following rules. How difficult could it be?

That was she'd told herself as she made her way down to the kitchen.

It hadn't quite had the same effect as smoke filled the entire kitchen and half the common area. Luckily only Tokoyami and Shoji were in the dorms that day and they were both at the gym or she would've likely forced everyone to evacuate.

All she'd wanted to do was make some vanilla cupcakes. It had seemed simple enough. It was simple. How she'd managed to smoke up the entire room and potentially cause a small fire was absolutely beyond her. It should not have been so difficult. Maybe it was because she'd fallen asleep on the couch or maybe because she'd accidentally forgotten to take out some baking pans on the bottom shelf of the oven. Whatever the case was, her attempt had been poor at best and nearly disastrous to the point of needing the fire department at worst. Not to mention that she'd burned herself in her panic to get the cupcakes out of the oven.

Seriously, how could one girl ruin a dozen cupcakes so terribly?

Uraraka stared down at the batch, most of them brown on the edges and almost all of them sticking to the cupcake tins. She must have forgotten to grease the tin so that they would come out with ease. There was one decent cupcake in the right tin. It didn't look burnt except for maybe one spot and, by sheer luck, when she tipped the tin over and gave it a _wack_ the cupcake fell onto the cooling rack without splitting in half.

A half aggravated/half accomplished sigh slipped out. Well, it was better than nothing. Bakugou had better appreciate the damn sentiment or she was liked to throttle him after all the work she'd done. Half the batter had somehow ended up on her in the process and she had flour in her hair and sugar under her nails. Not that he'd even asked for anything on his birthday. She'd texted Kirishima to see if they were doing anything for him, but apparently Bakugou was acting like a hermit and ignoring everyone.

Uraraka didn't care. He was going to get this cupcake, eat it, and maybe (but probably not) like it. She'd baked it for him and she had never baked before. Probably for a good reason. He was going to chew her out for trying it without proper supervision. The recipe and instructions had seemed so easy though.

At least she'd had the foresight to know that making her own icing was a bad idea. Luckily, Mina had a serious sweet tooth and sometimes ate icing right out of the container with a spoon. It drove Bakugou mad when she did that. For some reason, it weirded him out. Urakaka dolloped a spoonful of the stuff on top the cupcake and tried her best to make it look pretty. It ended up looking like she'd once had a pretty cupcake, but then dropped it on the ground.

It would have to do.

"What's that smell?" someone from behind asked. Uraraka spun around to find Tokoyami walking into the kitchen, a grimace on his face. He came to a halt when he saw the mess that she'd made of herself and the kitchen and then shook his head. "You were baking? Any special reason you decided on trying to burn down the dorms and make it look like an accident?"

"It's…" Uraraka held up her pitiful cupcake. "It's Bakugou's birthday."

Tokoyami folded his arms across his chest. "You made a single cupcake for his birthday when he's not even here?"

Uraraka frowned and glanced back at the ruined batch, most of which were still in the tin since she couldn't get them out. "Well, my goal was a dozen, but, um…"

"You must truly like him in order to attempt something like that," Tokoyami said thoughtfully. "I did not realize it was that serious."

"Wh-what?" Uraraka's face burned bright red underneath the flour on her cheeks. "I don't like him! Well, I mean, I do, but not in that way." She huffed. "I like to do something for everyone on their birthdays. Not everyone is as mysterious as you and keeps their birthdays a secret."

Tokoyami actually allowed a very small smile. "The public likes a bit of mystery."

"If you're trying to be cool," Uraraka told him, "it's working. But I still wish you'd tell us your birthday - at least for our last year."

Like a lot of them, Tokoyami had started to open and warm up more in their second year. It was kind of impossible to go through what they all did together and not get closer. He was still vague, edgy, and dark to everyone outside of the class, but that was just who he was. With their class, he was their friend, which he proved by helping her clean up the disaster site that she'd turned the kitchen into while attempting to bake.

"You don't have to do this," Uraraka said. "I made the mess; I can clean it myself."

"No, it's fine," Tokoyami replied evenly as he began to put away ingredients, "as long as you don't try to bake me something to show your gratitude."

She almost threw flour at him, which would've surely clashed with his all black outfit, but decided against it since he was helping her. It got done a lot quicker than if she'd had to do it herself, which meant that she had more time to take a short train ride to Bakugou's.

After changing a pair of shorts and a blouse that didn't have the remnants of cupcake batter all over it, Uraraka put her one sad cupcake in a small container and rummaged around one of the drawers for a candle. She knew they had some in here from when Deku and Asui had baked her and Todoroki's cakes when they celebrated their birthdays together. It was more economical that way and also the only way to convince Todoroki to actually celebrate his birthday. Once she had everything, she snatched her purse and then left campus. It was a beautiful day out, so the little trip was perfect timing.

It was about halfway through the trip though that the ridiculousness of the situation struck her upside the head. She was minding her own business, humming under her breath to a song playing over her headphones, when an elderly woman sat down next to her and spotted the cupcake in her lap, an openly curious look on her face.

Uraraka wasn't one to be rude, especially to older people, so she smiled and said, "It's my friend's birthday. He's stubborn about celebrating it, but I wanted to do something for him."

"A friend, eh?" the woman replied, a youthful gleam in her eyes. "He must be very special for you to go out of your way for him like this."

"Oh, yeah, he's-" Uraraka's smile turned tight. "It's not that big of a deal."

"It's a lot of work to bring someone a single homemade cupcake," the woman pointed out.

Uraraka looked down at the container in her lap. "It was the only one that turned out okay." She just wanted Bakugou to know that his friends were thinking about him. She had been in a group text with Kirishima, Kaminari, Sero, and Mina all day as they plotted on how they could get him to come out for his birthday. She kind of hoped that this little surprise would get the ball rolling. Either that or it would backfire spectacularly.

She was going to his house alone with a cupcake that she'd made. Her cheeks started to flush again the more she thought about it. Oh. Yeah, it definitely had some implications that she really had not been considering. This sounded like something a girl did to show that she had interest in someone, but that wasn't the case at all. She didn't have a crush on him. They were just friends, classmates. It wasn't like she found herself daydreaming about him or had spent time wondering what he was doing on this small break and had come up with an excuse to see him.

The voice over the speaker announced the next stop, startling Uraraka out of her thoughts and out of her seat when she realized this was where she needed to get off. She bid the old woman goodbye and rushed off the train with a group of people. For a moment, she was turned around, but then she remembered the path that they'd taken and started for it. She couldn't exactly remember which one was Bakugou's house, but Kirishima had given her the details.

Right before she rounded the block where his house was, her phone pinged. She fished it out of her purse and checked the text message, which was from Kirishima. _Fingers crossed your little baking experiment doesn't give him food poisoning because we're dragging that boy out tonight! It's the big 1-8! He ain't missing this!_ Before she could even respond, he sent another text that was just an assortment of emojis that only sort of made sense. He was worse about using them than her and that was saying something.

After sending him a handful of thumbs up emojis, Uraraka used her phone to take a snapchat of her holding the cupcake in front of Bakugou's house and captioned it, _Who wants to bet he's gonna blow this up?_ She sent it to everyone in the group chat, giggling as she did so, before walking to the front door. It was still in the afternoon, so his parents should still be at work. She wasn't sure if she could handle the humiliation of meeting his mom or dad. No doubt they would take this the wrong way too.

Once she was at the door, she made a call, sticking her tongue out in thought as she waited. Right before it went to voicemail, the phone was answered and a voice barked on the other end, "What the hell do you want?"

"Happy birthday!" Uraraka exclaimed cheerfully.

"Thanks," Bakugou snapped, not sounding like he meant it in the slightest. Likely he'd been getting calls and texts all day. "You did your bit, now bye."

"Wait! There's one more thing."

Bakugou huffed. "What?"

"Open your front door," Uraraka told him, just barely keeping herself from laughing.

There was a pause on the other end until Bakugou asked, "Why?"

"Just do it, you dork," Uraraka said. If she had asked him, likely he would've protested, but outright telling him made him indignant enough to do it. She could hear him grumbling under his breath and shuffling around as he got up. Someone thumped heavily down the stairs on the other side of the door before the doorknob jiggled and then the door swung open to reveal Bakugou still on the phone. "Surprise!"

"What the fuck, Uraraka?" Bakugou blurted. He dropped his cell to his side.

"No one should be alone on their birthday," Uraraka insisted. "Besides, I don't think I've ever seen you eat a sweet."

"That's because they're pointless carbs," Bakugou replied, like that meant anything to her. He didn't slam the door in her face, so she took that as a sign that she could come inside, if only for a little. She brushed past him and, to her credit, he shut the door instead of yelling at her to get out, so she figured that she'd read the situation right. "What is it?"

"I baked you a cupcake!" Uraraka said as she peeled off the lid and held it out to him.

Bakugou snorted and peered into the container. "Just one? It looks sad."

"Hey, I worked really hard on this," Uraraka said, giving him a playful pout.

"What happened to the rest?" Bakugou asked, giving her a knowing smug smirk. He knew damn well what had happened to them, but he wanted to hear her say it.

"They didn't make it," Uraraka mumbled. "May they rest in peace in the trash."

Bakugou shook his head, but didn't bite her head off as he wandered into the kitchen and she followed him without a word. She'd expected a lot more fighting from him if she was being honest, but there was very little aggression in his demeanor at the moment. Maybe he was one of those people that got meloncholoy on their birthdays. He didn't seem like it. Honestly, he kind of seemed like he'd been the kid that got everything he asked for on his birthday, no matter how expensive it was. She'd forgotten how _nice_ his parents' house was.

"Well, let's see what this little shit tastes like," Bakugou said as he sat down on a stool next to a kitchen island. Hesitation flared up in Uraraka for the third time today as he looked at her. Oh, he was putting her on the spot on purpose. The ease in which he held himself only made her more nervous. The smirk on his face slowly came back as she set it down in front of him. "I'm not eating this by myself. What if you poisoned it?"

"Why would I do that?" Uraraka demanded.

Bakugou shrugged his shoulders. "To beat me this year."

"I don't resort to underhanded tricks like that," Uraraka said proudly.

"Oh yeah?" Bakugou raised an eyebrow. "Like when you freaking tried to tickle me when I had you pinned down?"

Uraraka burst out into laughter at the memory. Okay, so he had her there. She'd be so furious with him that day. She was used to getting tossed around and beaten by him, but they had been practicing on specific sorts of holds and takedowns. Getting thrown on the mat and pinned in about twenty different ways time and time again had been so frustrating until finally she'd lashed out. Except instead of yelling or kicking, she'd poked him and began to tickle him mercilessly. The gasp and explosive laughter that had been forced out of him still made her smile. She'd had to lock herself in the girls' locker room to escape his wrath afterward.

Using her hands, Uraraka did what she could to split the cupcake in half, seeing as how he didn't seem intent on helping her, and gave him a piece. It was messily done though and she had icing all over her fingertips. Instead of wiping or washing them off, she quickly licked her fingers clean, savoring the sweet flavor of the icing.

However, when she finished, she noticed Bakugou was staring at her with a very intense expression on his face and his cheeks were dusted with a hint of blush. "What?"

The strange look was hastily replaced with a scowl, although the blush didn't leave. "Nothing. You're just weird."

Uraraka rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Eat your damn birthday cupcake." She took a bite of her piece first and then Bakugou did. Her eyebrows raised. Honestly, it was a lot better than she'd expected it to be and she happily finished it off. It would've been nice if she had been able to make more than one, but at least she knew that the recipe had worked. "So?"

"Well," Bakugou said, considering it as he finished his piece much slower, "it's not going to kill me, I don't think, so you're improving."

"Thanks!" Uraraka beamed. "Also Kirishima will be relieved that my baking didn't kill you."

Bakugou narrowed his eyes. "Why?"

She placed her hands behind her back and clasped them together. "He may or may not be on his way with the others."

"That bastard!" Bakugou snarled, little pops of explosions rattling from his palms.

She just laughed again. Somehow she knew that while he looked really pissed, he wasn't actually that angry. He hadn't got up from his seat or snatched his phone to call his best friend to tell him off. No, he'd already accepted what was happening. Maybe he didn't like it - or maybe he just wanted people to think that he didn't like it. After all, there was nothing so nice as friends going out of their way to be with you on your birthday even when you tried to isolate yourself. Even Bakugou could appreciate that on some level.

"You really came all the way out here to give me a damn cupcake?" Bakugou asked.

"I like doing things for my friends on their birthday," Uraraka told him as she trailed a finger along a wandering path on top of the marble island counter. "And I thought, well, your next birthday will be after we graduate. I might not get another chance."

"Another chance for what?"

Uraraka shrugged her shoulders, feeling suddenly very self-conscious. "I guess to do something special for you."

There was a moment of silence in which she contemplated whether she could activate her quirk on herself and float into space to get out of this conversation. She didn't know why it was so embarrassing for her all of a sudden. She hadn't worried about what her intentions might sound like the entire day until other people had started to point out how weird she was about this. Was it weird or was it something else?

"Better make this one count then, huh?" Bakugou finally said. She jerked her gaze back up to him. That smug look back on his face again. Now he was definitely teasing her and she huffed and put her hands on her hips, which only made him laugh. As much as she wanted to be angry with him for mocking her, she couldn't help the smile that came on her face. Yeah, they'd have to make this the best birthday ever. She could manage that.


End file.
